McLaren US GP upgrades target braking and floor
McLaren US GP upgrades arrive at Circuit of the Americas this weekend with a narrow brief. The team is bringing what chief technical officer Rob Marshall calls a "modest selection," aimed at braking reliability and braking performance, plus small floor changes to test in Austin.
That is the mechanical story to watch. Braking stability decides how late a driver can stay on the pedal into the heavy stopping zones, and how much confidence survives the bumps. A floor revision is quieter work, but it shifts the whole balance window.
Marshall framed the weekend as a correlation exercise as much as a performance one. "Practice will be important for correlating what we've seen in our development tools with the track," he said.
Seven points separate McLaren from Red Bull
McLaren sit third in the Constructors' Championship with six rounds remaining. Across the first leg of the season-ending triple header, that position tightened sharply: a 76-point cushion over fourth-placed Red Bull is now seven.
The raw numbers are blunt. McLaren scored 33 points over those three races and took no podium. Red Bull collected four top-three finishes, two of them wins for Max Verstappen. McLaren's own pre-Austin preview described the run as "significantly short of expectations" and the haul as "significantly lower than anticipated."
The team believes Austin suits the car better. "The last few races have not been great for us, but I think we're getting stronger again and Austin is probably a better circuit for our car," Marshall said.
Balance work across a full range of corners
Marshall was careful not to promise a fix. "We have all seen how difficult it is to predict the relative performance of the top teams over the last five or six races," he said, listing upgraded cars, circuit characteristics and driver preference as variables.
His stated priority is lap-wide balance rather than a single corner. "We are still learning how best to extract performance from this car. We have the full range of corner types here so getting the best balance for the whole lap will be our main focus."
Singapore and Austin incidents leave little margin
McLaren's Singapore weekend cost them eight points on the final lap of the Sprint, when Lando Norris attempted a late pass on team-mate Oscar Piastri and the two cars collided. Norris apologised afterwards and called the move ill-advised.
In the team's Austin preview, the world champion said: "I take responsibility for my mistakes, and I learn from them."
Austin carries its own recent scar. Both McLarens went out on the first lap of the 2025 Sprint there, in a chain reaction set off when Piastri collided with Nico Hulkenberg. Twelve months on, the team has little room for a repeat.
Paddock verdict on McLaren's pace
Speaking on The F1 Show podcast after Singapore, Sky Sports F1's Bernie Collins argued the problem is recurring. "McLaren have had a few incidents through the year where they have not maximised their points," she said. "Max Verstappen maximised the result, McLaren did not."
Collins also suggested Red Bull's own driver situation flattered McLaren. "Arguably, I think if Hadjar hadn't missed three races when Liam Lawson was in that car Red Bull would be ahead of McLaren," she said. "But now Red Bull are on the up and they need to up their game if they are going to survive in that P3 position."
Karun Chandhok was blunter about the machinery. "I think they probably know they now have the fourth-fastest car, which is a bit of a concern, and Red Bull are probably now the fastest if not second-fastest car for most tracks."
The original report is from skysports.com.
